Back in the entrance hall, I returned to Munroe, who stood silently in a corner, awaiting my orders. “If I may,” I said, “a light lunch. Nothing heavy.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and disappeared.
As I waited in the dining room, the new steward stopped in to greet me. His father had been my father’s longtime steward, and this younger Ames had worked side by side with him for some time, taking over fully two years earlier, when his father passed away. We talked of my concerns and his, and I was pleased to find that he seemed as competent as his father had no doubt been. Afterwards, I took a walk into the fields—now that I was not in Jamaica, it did not seem an extraordinary thing to do. The haying had started, and I watched the workers, their scythes swinging in rhythm. I almost envied their simple, backbreaking labor. The sweet, grassy scent of new-cut hay hung in the air, and I closed my eyes and listened to a lark as it rose high in the sky, and, from a distance, the call of the cuckoo. I stopped in to the little church at the gates to Thornfield Park and strolled through the graveyard there, the last resting place of my ancestors—and of my father and my mother. Even Rowland’s body had somehow been brought back from Scotland. Rowland. When I saw his gravestone, when I thought of him, I felt neither sadness nor joy, just an emptiness.
That night I slept in the room that had once been my father’s. I felt strange in that place, as if I were an interloper, for the only bed I had known before at Thornfield had been in the nursery. When I awoke, the sun was still low in the sky, but I could not force myself back to sleep. I knew I must return to Ferndean and take care of my responsibilities there, so I rose and threw on my clothes and pulled up my boots, and, unshaven, I hurried down the broad front stairs. I had not even reached the ground floor when Munroe appeared.
“Mr. Rochester, sir,” he said, striding forward, nodding a bow.
“Is it likely that Mrs. Keen has bread and jam in the kitchen?” I asked.
“I am sure she is preparing a proper breakfast. If you will allow me—”
“Please…I will just go into the kitchen myself and see what she has there.”
“Sir…” He looked at me in puzzlement.
“We will sort it all out, I am sure, Munroe, but for now I must hasten back to Ferndean.” I was already walking away from him.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Hearing the note in his voice, I turned back to him. He looked quite forlorn, as if bereft of all responsibilities. “I apologize if I seem abrupt,” I said. “I shall just take a bit of breakfast in the kitchen and then be off.”
“In the kitchen, sir?” He had no way of knowing it was for me one of the most comfortable places at Thornfield.
“Yes.” I nodded.
I found Mrs. Keen in the kitchen, where she was already frying up bacon and cooking eggs. After I had turned down her offer to send them to the dining room, she studiously avoided any more discussion, surely thinking her new employer strange. So be it. She was thinner than the only cook I had known at Thornfield, which had seemed to me a bad sign, but her tea the night before had been very tasty, and the breakfast turned out to be perfectly cooked.
When I made to leave, Munroe appeared at the door to see me off, as a good butler should. “When shall you be returning, sir?” he asked.
“I am not sure,” I responded. “But I will send word.”
“Very good, sir.”
I wished I could stay. I wished Ferndean did not weigh so heavily on my mind. I wished I had a better plan. I wished I had a choice.
*
At Ferndean I found a silent house, except for Mrs. Greenway working quietly, with Tiso lingering uncertainly in the doorway. I took a seat at the table.
“Is your mother with Bertha?” I asked her.
Tiso mumbled something.
“And Madame Antoinetta?”
“She sick,” she whispered.
I sprang from my chair. I had completely forgotten about the laudanum; Bertha would be suffering grievously from the lack of it. I ran up the stairs, but the door was locked. I pounded on it until Molly opened it. Beyond her, I saw Bertha lying on the bed, bedclothes and rugs mounded on top of her as if she were trapped in an ice cave in January instead of a comfortable room in the middle of June. I could see that she was shivering and hear her anguished moans.
“Get coffee,” I said to Molly. She darted from the room as if she knew where coffee was to be found.
I sat on the bed beside Bertha, reached my hand beneath all her coverings, and found her arm and her shoulder, and I stroked them gently. “It will be all right,” I said to her. “I will make it right.” I talked like that, as if I could make well again everything that had gone wrong in her life and mine, with words alone. Would that I could.
When Molly returned I dropped just a bit, but almost all I had left, of the laudanum into the cup and urged Bertha to sit and drink, and afterwards, she stared at me as if I were a stranger and then blessedly slipped back into her own world. I turned away and caught Molly watching me. “We will have to make her right again,” I said.
*
I asked Mrs. Greenway to send for Mr. Carter, but she insisted on going herself. Perhaps she was just as happy as I for an excuse to leave Ferndean. Meanwhile, I sat with Bertha and pondered our situation: how long it would take to wean her from the laudanum, if indeed it could be done. What if it had permanently worsened her condition, and she remained ill—or, worse, became even more unmanageable? Back at Valley View, I had imagined the worst would be the ocean journey. It had not occurred to me that that was only the beginning.
Oh God, I thought, what have I done? Would Molly and Tiso accommodate themselves to life in England? And what if they simply refused? What if Molly, now that she was no longer a slave, decided to leave? Or insisted the two of them be returned to the only home they had known? Would they not miss Jamaica as much as I had pined for Thornfield? And could I expect Mrs. Greenway—or any other cottage woman—to stay in a household such as this?
Feeling overwhelmed, I rose and walked to a window and gazed out, but all one could see from Ferndean’s windows were trees, and then I finally left the room. Molly and Tiso were just outside the door, sitting on the floor and playing their game of bones and pebbles. The two of them did not acknowledge me as I walked past, as slaves would not, though, I realized, servants would have done. England was so different from Jamaica in so many ways, and yet it was essential that Molly and Tiso remain with us, for I now saw that I could not manage Bertha without them.
*
When Mrs. Greenway returned, red-faced from her exertions, she announced, “I have sent a cottage boy. I told him to make sure Mr. Carter understood it was urgent.”